SPEECH OF SARA BARD FIELD 
 FEBRUARY THE FIFTEENTH 
 
 MDCCCCXXI 
 ATWASHINGTON-D-C- 
 
University of California Berkeley 
 
 From the Library of 
 
 Charles Erskine Scott Wood 
 
 and his Wife 
 
 Sara Bard Field 
 
 Given in Memory of 
 
 JAMES R.CALDWELL 
 
THE SPEECH OF 
 
 SARA BARD FIELD 
 
 PRESENTING TO CONGRESS ON 
 BEHALF OFTHE WOMEN OFTHE NATION 
 
 THE MARBLE BUSTS OF 
 THREE SUFFRAGE PIONEERS 
 
 LUCRETIA MOTT 
 ELIZABETH STANTON CADY 
 SUSAN BROWNELL ANTHONY 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO: 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED BY 
 
 JOHN HENRY NASH 
 
 1921 
 
THE speech of Sara Bard Field, delivered 
 February fifteenth, nineteen hundred & 
 twenty-one, at half past eight o clock in 
 the evening in the rotunda of the capital at Wash- 
 ington, presenting to Congress on behalf of the 
 Women of the Nation as a memorial the marble 
 busts of three suffrage pioneers: Lucre tia Mott, 
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Browne// 
 Anthony; Jane Addams presiding ; Speaker F. 
 H. Gillett responding on behalf of Congress. 
 
 CHAIRMAN JANE ADDAMS, RESPECTED AND BELOVED OF THE 
 WHOLE WORLD, MR. SPEAKER AND FRIENDS : 
 
 The women of this country, through the repre- 
 sentative organizations gathered here tonight, are 
 celebrating their hard won political freedom by 
 presenting to the nation a lasting memorial the 
 busts of three women, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth 
 Cady Stan ton and Susan Brownell Anthony who 
 were pioneers in the woman's revolution, leaders 
 in the persecuted advance guard of that vast army 
 of women, known and unknown,who have fought 
 for political justice. Although we have taken the 
 likenesses of three prominent women for this me- 
 morial, nevertheless in its deepest significance it 
 
is a monument to women past, present and to 
 come. 
 
 There is an historic moment in the career of 
 Napoleon which lives in the heart of every 
 Frenchman. Napoleon, having led his army into 
 Egypt, came to the Pyramids and sitting on his 
 horse gazed at the Sphinx and said, "Here forty 
 centuries look down on us. " Tonight as we look 
 upon these marble busts of our Great Dead and 
 realize the significance of this moment, what 
 loving heart of us but does not feel that not forty 
 centuries alone but all the centuries since Time 
 was born are gazing down on us. The busts in 
 themselves are not an ancient work like the 
 Sphinx. They have been but recently completed 
 by Adelaide Johnson. But the struggle for jus- 
 tice, the passionate struggle for freedom, of which 
 these women have been so unique a part is as old 
 as the dawn of self-consciousness in the twilight 
 of man's first birth. And because it is a struggle 
 which not only has endured throughout the cen- 
 turies that have gone but in ever-changing form 
 must endure, always, you and I, with prophetic 
 vision, can see the centuries to come looking back 
 at this moment as one of the milestones on the 
 upward path of Progress. Here before us about 
 to become the sacred property of the Nation are 
 three women who are now part of that "Choir 
 
Invisible who live again in minds made better by 
 their presence." 
 
 Mr. Speaker, we women who are uniting in this 
 Presentation do not feel we are so much honor- 
 ing these three rebel leaders as we are honoring 
 Congress itself by committing these busts to its 
 keeping. For, Mr. Speaker, we do not commit to 
 your keeping merely a block of marble wrought 
 into likenesses which in a chaste repose like Death 
 itself will henceforth remain in Statuary Hall, 
 but we commit to your keeping blood-red memo- 
 ries, alive and pulsing the labor of these women 
 by day and by night; the daring attack on en- 
 trenched Custom and Superstition and formida- 
 ble Institution, the defying of even that religious 
 sanction which like a whitened sepulchre had 
 been built about the rotting bones of woman's 
 slavery, the gallant acceptance of the mysterious 
 challenge to live a great life for others at the ex- 
 pense of self rather than a little life for self at 
 the expense of others with all the bitter loneli- 
 ness this entailed the persecutions, the mis- 
 understandings, the slanders, the heartaches, the 
 ever-deferred hopes and "the ability to take 
 infinite pains," which Goethe tells us is the mark 
 of genius, all these, Mr. Speaker, we bring in 
 tender hands and commit to the keeping of Con- 
 gress. To say that Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth 
 
 3 
 
Cady Stanton called the first Women's Rights 
 Convention in 1848; to say that they were re- 
 spectively President and Vice-President, and 
 Susan B. Anthony Corresponding Secretary of 
 the first American Equal Rights Association is 
 merely to hint at the rich outpouring of lives 
 which these women gave on behalf of women, 
 and of the Nation, and of the human race, re- 
 membering as we must "man that is born of 
 
 woman." 
 
 And, Mr. Speaker, I do not feel I arrogate to my 
 faith in women too much when I say that with 
 the dedication of these busts of our pioneers 
 there is presented tonight the renewed dedica- 
 tion of the women of this Land to the vast work 
 of a greater freedom which lies before us. It is 
 Universal Freedom for which the movement 
 represented by these women has ever been. The 
 Woman's Rights Movement was born in the very 
 body of the Anti-Slavery Movement. Lucretia 
 Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. 
 Anthony refused to narrow the suffrage agitation 
 down to women alone while the negro but re- 
 cently freed from chattel slavery remained in 
 political bondage. The very first Suffrage Asso- 
 ciation was called the American Equal Rights 
 Association and its object was to enfranchise the 
 negro as well as the woman. Listen to these 
 
words written by Susan B. Anthony and intro- 
 duced as part of a resolution in the Convention 
 which formed the first American Equal Rights 
 Association: "Hence our demand must now go 
 beyond women. It must extend to the farthest 
 bound of the principle of the 'consent of the 
 governed* as the only authorized or just govern- 
 ment. We therefore wish to broaden our Wo- 
 man's Rights platform and make it in name what 
 it has ever been in spirit a human rights' plat- 
 form." Do you think that women who thought 
 in those terms would sit idle today because poli- 
 tical democracy has become an accomplished 
 fact in this nation? Do you think that women 
 like these who published a paper in the sixties 
 called "Revolution" would not see the need of 
 that brooding angel's presence still ? Needless to 
 say I do not speak in terms of bloody revolution 
 any more than did they. But men and women 
 are not yet free. 
 
 We have won political freedom and now man 
 and woman, comrades in the experiment of poli- 
 tical democracy, we stand ready to advance to- 
 gether. Men and women are not yet free. The 
 slavery of greed endures. Little child-workers, 
 the hope of the Future, are sacrificed to Industry; 
 and the young men, the sons of Mothers, are 
 sent out by the millions to die for Profits. It 
 
makes my heart glad to realize that these busts, 
 the first gift of women to the Nation's gallery, 
 represent no military heroes. They represent 
 those who gave life not took it. Their battle was 
 one of mind and soul. They came that they might 
 give life and give it more abundantly. And so 
 through their likenesses we are dedicating the 
 woman's protest against War. 
 
 To effectively banish War forever we must 
 destroy Industrial Slavery and build the Indus- 
 trial Democracy. So long as the earth belongs to 
 the few of each land, those few will, like dogs 
 over a bone, fight for its possession and the young 
 men will be sent out to die for the Few, and the 
 Mothers will be left desolate. The people every- 
 where must come into possession of the earth so 
 that there can be no bloody quarrels about that 
 which belongs to all. 
 
 Someday without a trumpet call 
 
 This word shall o'er the earth be blown ; 
 
 The heritage retuxa* to all ; 
 
 The myriad monarchs take their own. 
 
 And there is the slavery to Privilege in all its 
 forms that malign Power which dares to deny 
 to the people of this Nation those Republican 
 rights for which our fathers died the right to 
 free assembly, the right to free speech. 
 The History of Woman's Suffrage tells us how 
 
 6 
 
again and again these three intrepid women 
 fought for the right to give public utterance to 
 their views. This is a sacred right and if it is 
 sacred to women, women must feel that it is 
 sacred to every group of every persuasion. There 
 is not a doctrine that should be denied a tongue. 
 Who knows in what shell of doctrine lies the 
 pearl of truth? "Are we then to meet words with 
 words or words with force?" 
 
 Mr. Speaker, you will see that if you thought 
 you came here tonight to receive on behalf of 
 Congress merely the busts of three women who 
 have fought the good fight and gone to rest, you 
 were mistaken. You will see that through them 
 it is the body and the blood of a great sacrificial 
 host which we present the body and the blood 
 of Revolution, the body and blood of Freedom 
 herself. You will see that these women are pre- 
 sented to Congress in an invisible Temple in 
 which they at once built and are built upon 
 the temple of Humanity. j They who sit down in 
 this Temple and refuse to build their part, retard 
 its growth. But they hasten the day of its com- 
 pletion who like these women whose busts are 
 before us, refuse to be kept from the higher call- 
 ing to which they are called. Listen and in clos- 
 ing I will in the words of a brother-poet describe 
 to you this Temple. 
 
You must understand this is no dead pile 
 of stones and unmeaning timber. It is a 
 living thing. When you enter it you hear a 
 sound a sound as of some mighty poem 
 chanted. Listen long enough, and you will 
 learn that it is made up of the beating of 
 human hearts, of the nameless music of men's 
 souls, that is if you have ears. If you have 
 eyes, you will presently see the church itself 
 a looming mystery of many shapes and 
 shadows, leaping sheer from floor to dome. 
 The work of no ordinary builder! The pillars 
 of it go up like the brawny trunks of heroes : 
 the sweet human flesh of men and women is 
 moulded about its bulwarks, strong, im- 
 pregnable: the faces of little children laugh 
 out from every cornerstone. The terrible 
 spans and arches of it are the joined hands 
 of comrades; and up in the heights and 
 spaces there are inscribed the numberless 
 musings of all the dreamers of the world. It 
 is yet building building and built upon. 
 Sometimes the work goes forward in deep 
 darkness; sometimes in blinding light: now 
 beneath the burden of unutterable anguish; 
 now to the sound of a great laughter and 
 heroic shoutings like the cry of thunder. 
 Sometimes in the silence of the night-time 
 
 8 
 
you can hear the tiny hammerings of the 
 Comrades at work up in the dome the 
 Comrades who have climbed ahead. 
 
 Here are we living workers in the Temple and 
 above us these Comrades of ours who have 
 climbed ahead. It is the likeness of them and all 
 they mean in themselves and in us that we, the 
 Women of the Nation, present through you, Mr. 
 Speaker, to the People of the United States of 
 America. 
 
-Lhis Speech 
 
 was only fully reported in the 
 Federated Press and did not appear in any San Fran- 
 cisco paper. 'Though not officially connected with the 
 last convention of the National Woman's Party, the 
 occasion for delivery of this address was really a pre- 
 lude to it. Before the events great publicity had be en 
 given both to the presentation of the busts and to the 
 convention to which came delegations from all over 
 the United States and from Europe. 'This publicity 
 and the absence of any report in the regular press led 
 to many requests for the speech, which demand still 
 continues, and some women, who feel that the speech 
 is part of a notable event of especial interest 
 to women, have caused it to be 
 printed.